Laura Bush and Barbara Bush pointed at each other when former President George W. Bush said he was about to introduce his favorite first lady for a panel conversation with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin at SMU. Bush then asked his mother if she would mind if it was a tie.

The 2012 presidential campaign has eight months to go, but former first lady Barbara Bush has already given it a bad review.

“I think it’s been the worst campaign I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said Monday at Southern Methodist University during a daylong conference on the influence of the nation’s first ladies. “I hate that people think compromise is a dirty word. It’s not a dirty word.”

The comment, which drew applause from the audience of about 300, came about midway through an hourlong discussion with daughter-in-law and fellow former first lady Laura Bush.

It was the only reference to the current presidential campaign in a panel devoted to the reminiscences of the wives of former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

In her criticism, Barbara Bush did not single out a particular candidate. She has expressed her support, however, for Republican front-runner Mitt Romney and has recorded robo-calls for him in Vermont and Ohio, which have primaries on Tuesday.

Laura Bush tended to be more diplomatic. When asked about the loss of civility in Washington, she recalled viewing vicious political cartoons aimed at Abraham Lincoln and said, “You see that, and you realize it’s just a part of American politics.”

Her mother-in-law disagreed, saying the current political atmosphere was the worst she could remember. “I think the rest of the world is looking at us these days and saying, ‘What are you doing?’” she said.

George W. Bush introduced his wife and his mother, joking that “I have the honor of presenting the best first lady ever.”

He waited for the laughter to die down and then added: “Mom, will you take a tie?”

During the next hour, Barbara Bush frequently showed her famous wit — which often carried an edge.

When asked about her favorite room in the White House, she said it was her office.

“Before that, it was Nancy Reagan’s beauty parlor,” she said. “She doesn’t like me to call it that. But that’s what it was.”

While Laura Bush recalled restoring the Lincoln Bedroom, Barbara Bush told a story of how the first of the 41st president’s overnight visitors to the White House spent a miserable night there.

“The mattress was so uncomfortable, we had to send it back,” she said. “It may have been history, but you couldn’t sleep on it.”

Her biggest laugh came after she complimented Laura and her husband on the humanitarian work they had done in the Third World, noting that people were appreciative enough to name their children after the former president.

“To this day, there are little George Bushes running around all over Africa,” she said.

There were more serious moments, too.

Barbara Bush, in recalling her fondness for her predecessor Lady Bird Johnson, said she was angered when associates of the Kennedy family disparaged the Johnsons.

“They’d talk about these terrible Texans, and I’d say, ‘I’m a Texan,’” she recalled, “And they said, ‘No, you’re from the East.’ Then I’d tell them, ‘Well, my children are Texans.’”

Laura Bush, too, seemed angered by memories of the criticism her family received while in the White House.

“Nobody likes to see their husband criticized,” she said, “and what happens in Washington is that presidents and first ladies are caricatured as something they’re not.”

The conference featuring the two women also included a panel on the role of their social secretaries and a discussion by photographers who had documented the first ladies.

Anita McBride, who served as Laura Bush’s chief of staff in the White House, chaired the conference at SMU, where former President George W. Bush’s library is under construction. McBride is now an executive-in-residence in the school of public affairs at American University in Washington.

“It’s a very public role,” McBride said of the first ladies. “You’re not an elected official, but you automatically have a platform and a position you have to fill. Pat Nixon called it the hardest unpaid job in the world.”

McBride said that she hoped the conference — a collaboration of the White House Historical Association, American University and the National Archives, which oversees presidential libraries — would help people “gain a broader understanding of the significance of this role.”

Though Barbara and Laura Bush were the only first ladies at Monday’s event, McBride said aides to other first ladies were consulted and invited to send representatives.

Similar events focusing on other first ladies are being considered, including a conference planned for the fall on the late Lady Bird Johnson at her husband’s presidential library in Austin, McBride said.

The George W. Bush Presidential Center, which will feature a presidential library and policy center, is set to open in spring 2013, though the institute has already started programming.